Tony Roberts has died. A stage and screen veteran best known for his collaborations with Woody Allen—including a co-starring role in 1977’s Annie Hall—Roberts was also a regular figure on Broadway, picking up two Tony nominations across a long career. Other film credits included roles in classics like Serpico and The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three, while TV roles included starring parts in crime series Rosetti And Ryan, ’80s sitcom The Thorns, and (befitting Roberts’ position as a New York actor of a certain age and caliber) fully four different guest appearances on Law & Order. Per Variety, Roberts died on Friday of complications from lung cancer. He was 85.
Born in New York in the late ’30s, Roberts was the son of well-known radio and TV announcer Ken Roberts. (Who presumably passed on at least part of his son’s distinctive vocal register; the younger Roberts had a long secondary career as an audiobook narrator, including voicing a 1994 abridged audiobook version of the original three Star Wars films.) Roberts got his start in entertainment on the stage, though, appearing in multiple Broadway productions, and earning Tony nods for How Now, Dow Jones and Play It Again, Sam. The latter was a major turning point for Roberts’ career, as it marked the beginning of both a professional relationship, and a long-running friendship, with the play’s writer and star, a then-ascendant Woody Allen.
Allen and Roberts would ultimately make six movies together, starting with the 1972 film adaptation of Play It Again. Annie Hall, Stardust Memories, A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, Hannah And Her Sisters, and Radio Days would follow, often placing Roberts in a best friend role to Allen’s various neurotic characters. In a 2016 interview, Roberts talked about forging his friendship with Allen, saying it stemmed at least in part from a willingness to speak honestly with Allen, instead of treating him as the pop culture figure of “genius” he was already being treated as by the late ’60s. (In a 2017 interview, Roberts said he ended up self-publishing his memoir, Do You Know Me?, because he refused to agree to publisher requests to address allegations of sexual assault or impropriety against Allen, saying, “I didn’t want to go near it, for personal reasons because he’s my friend and because, quite frankly, I didn’t believe any of the aspersions that were made against him. He has denied them, and I believe him.”)
Beyond his long association with Allen, Roberts continued to act, on stage, screen, and TV, for the rest of his life. His final roles, in the mid-2010s, ran the gamut between mainstream fare and far stranger projects, befitting his long career: Within a three-year span, he appeared in ABC’s ill-conceived TV movie remake of Dirty Dancing, the Jason Bateman vehicle The Longest Week, and (as himself) in Brett Gelman’s deliberately oddball Adult Swim comedy special Dinner With Family With Brett Gelman And Brett Gelman’s Family.
